mochar chop – banana blossom appetizer

Banana blossom or mocha (in Bengali an East Indian language) holds a special stature in Bengali cuisine, and consider as very adventurous and gastronomically exciting. I was never a huge fan of banana blossom or mocha as we love to call it in my growing up years though we had some banana plants in our backyard, but in recent years I developed a strong fascination for it.

We used to make boats out of its rich purplish leaves or bracts and after a heavy downpour, when the small dried streams comes alive with full force, our boats streamed along its way to some unknown destinations.

Sometimes by using its fibres, we made sail boats apparently for a longer journey or even trade boats. I know that sounds little strange, but such are the ways of childhood days. Whatever we found in our daily hiking in the woods, be it a rare wild flower, or wild berries, some colored barks of a tree, beautiful pebbles, pine cones, tamarind and wild gooseberries, all formed a part of that little trade and growing up in a beautiful hilly town strewn with eucalyptus, pines and teak meant pockets were always filled with those little treasures.

As I am writing this post, my mind re-lives those blissful moments of childhood days once again.

Coming back to the banana blossom appetizer or mochar chop, I have arrived at this recipe (recipe courtesy: one of my friend who is a chef) after some trial and errors and found this works best for me.

What to remove from the banana blossoms: Beneath every bracts lies the ordered rows of yellow-tipped small florets, which looks highly appealing. Remove the pinkish inedible hard fibre like small petals or casing at the stem base and the hard stigma from each florets as shown in the photo.

The innermost conical part: While doing so a stage will be reached when it is no longer possible to peel off the blossoms, chop off the innermost conical part and use it in your recipe or make fritters with it as I did here.

To remove the bitterness of mocha: Boil the mocha or banana blossom in water which has a healthy volume of lemon juice or tamarind extract in it. Most of the chefs boil it in diluted milk to make it more soft (as told to me by one of the budding professional chef)

Banna blossom appetizer with coconut and peanuts, it holds a special stature in Bengali cuisine.

Author: Sukanya Ghosh

Recipe type: Appetiser

Cuisine: Indian

Serves: 6

Ingredients

Flower of Banana (or Mocha): One

Potatoes (mashed): 3 big sized

Green chilies (chopped):4-5

Cumin seeds: 1 tsp

Cardamoms: 2-3

Scraped Coconut and peanuts: ½ cup

Cumin powder: 1 tsp

Ginger (chopped):1tsp

Garam masala: 1 tsp

Sugar : ½ tsp

Salt to taste

A mix of cornflour and breadcrumbs: ½ cup

Oil for deep-frying

Instructions

Prepare the florets

Collect the florets of the flower, tear out the middle stem (stigma) of the florets and finely chopped the florets in batches.

Boil the florets in water with lemon juice or tamarind extract or try it with milk for 10 minutes. Strain the florets in a strainer and discard the water, squeeze extra water out of it by hard pressing, it will become pulpy. Keep it aside.

Prepare the stuffing

Heat some oil in a pan and temper it with cumin seeds. Add the chopped mocha or banana florets and saute for sometime. Next add the peanuts or grated coconut along with cumin powder, garam masala, ginger, salt and sugar to taste. Lightly stir fry for few more minutes and remove from the heat.

Prepare the potato shells

Mashed thoroughly the potatoes and mix it with salt and finely chopped green chillies. Divide it into six portions, flatten them like patties and give a bowl like shape.

Filled the bowl of mashed potatoes with stir fried mocha or banana blossom in the centre and wrap it along so that the mocha is well secured inside it .

Give them your desired shapes and dust each of the mochar chop / cutlet with cornflour and breadcrumbs mix, deep fry them in sufficient oil till they become golden brown in color.

Oil your palms well, specially the finger tips and nails, otherwise the sap or juicy extract from the blossoms will blacken the fingers , the black marks will eventually disappear in 2-3 days.Oil the knife too if you are chopping the florets for the same reason stated above.After removing the florets, directly put them in a bowl of water as they are quick to oxidize.

3.2.2802

banana blossom appetizer served with kasundi (Bengali mustard sauce)

If you like this recipe then please consider sharing it and do not forget to send me your feedbacks.

30 Comments

Wow! This reminds me of my childhood. Mom used to be crazy about these and would pester granny to make some. I would crib. (I was averse to chops and fries and all such food items back then)
Thanks for sharing the recipe! 😀

This is interesting! I tried the vazhappo and made somewhat of a masala curry out of it – I must say it was very bitter and needed a lot of seasoning to get past that!
I might try this next time – thanks for sharing 🙂

Debjani

Welcome Dimah,
@Devaki this is really a wonderful appetizer, try it you will love it
@Lubna potatoes wrapping makes it more tasty and yummy
@Vaishali cleaning banana blossom is a tedious task no doubt but it taste so good that you will do it again and again.
@Priya you need to get rid off its bitterness by soaking it in lemon or tamarind
Welcome sweetartichoke I am glad that you like the detailed explanations, it really makes easy to understand and follow.

[…] blossoms, chopping, cleaning etc and couple of years back I have documented them in my old post of Mochar chop. Please refer back to that post for your easy understanding, if you are not familiar with […]

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About Me

Hi ! This is Sukanya, an ex- geoscience professional turned into food enthusiasts, writer, traveler, photographer behind this blog. I believe every food has a story to tell and am on a mission to discover them.

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